Don’t get me wrong, we have come back to overflowing in-boxes and more than one telephone message, but the to do list makes it all manageable but what I am really blogging about is that how just a little bit of communication really has made all the difference to our state of mind and our customer’s expectations.

Everyone needs a holiday, if you are to work effectively with renewed vigor it really is worth recharging those batteries, but as I have blogged before, being self employed doesn’t lend itself to holidays, especially not when you work with your other half!

So what did we do differently this time that enabled us to get away for such a long time?  We let our customers know when we would be away and what to do in an emergency – not that Internet marketing or SEO is ever life or death you understand!  How did we do this…. well I used Mailchimp to set up an above board, fully legal mail out to our address list.  I then added in subsections to our database and emailed out specific information to specific groups of customers informing them of what to do and who to contact if their website went down or their email stopped working.

And do you know what – no one had an emergency after all and by letting everyone know that we were out of the country and that we weren’t turning our mobiles on they didn’t get in touch even though they knew we were away.  Having had time off in the past when people still thought it acceptable to ring at 10pm on a Sunday night, these two weeks have been a revelation.

Having taken the time to work with Mailchimp and find out all the wonderful things it can do, we are going to be offering newsletter set up and management out to customers so do let us know if you are interested and when we are ready to offer a package we will be in touch.

So, now we are back from our travels (NYC and a wee cruise on the QM2) we are raring to go, fully recharged and extremely happy with our self serving customers

So, what do we do?  We call our friendly Vodafone helpline, who after 10 different button push choices tell us that we can’t speak to a human but we can use the online chat facility.  That’s fine, my typing speed is quick and my Internet connection for the minute seems stable enough to cope.  I explain our problem to 1st chat representative and ask if we can change our contract onto iPhones, you know send our BB’s back to them, stay on the same enormous tariff that we don’t use all of the minutes, texts or data usage for anyway, so they are still making money out of us – I am kind of thinking this is sounding quite familiar to many of you.  Oh and did I mention that we have been with Vodfone for probably 12 years, loyal service blah blah blah.

Well, 1st Vodafone chat representative said there was no way we could get out of our current contract, nor could it be downgraded, but don’t worry, we could purchase new phones from Vodafone and they will change the tariff over from Blackberry to iPhone.  Job done…  ‘I will transfer this chat to our sales team’…. ok.  2nd Vodafone chat representative joins the conversation and I have to give him 15 minutes to read through previous chat and that he will get back to me.  15 minutes later and his first question is ‘so you would like to buy an iPhone’.  This is going great, yes is my answer and we will sell back our Blackberries to Vodafone in order to help pay for them.  Silly silly me – what was I thinking?  This now leads to a full discussion and a repetition of everything I have already typed and he has supposedly read, and for him to keep telling me not to sell our phones because did we know we were in a contract?  Did we also know that we can’t upgrade until next November?  Not sure I have ever experience online chat rage before, but I have now!

So to cut a very long story short, we are now left with two options, pay £500 each to have a new iPhone – not going to happen, or stick with our current over priced contract of which we only use half of the allocated service using phones that are now deemed unreliable and work only when they feel like it.  And before I get inundated with the comments such as ‘good old Blackberry giving Steve Jobs a fitting send off’ or ‘you should have got an iPhone in the first place’ I am genuinely interested to hear if other people have had similar problems and what you did to resolve them?

I will be sad to see my Blackberry go, but what is the point in having a work tool that isn’t reliable?  Not even sure if I am convinced I want an iPhone and perhaps HTC is the way forward, but right now, we are stuck in a rut with Vodafone refusing to budge an inch….

Answers and suggestions on a BBM…

So, the dilemma is:  what do you do when your customers don’t pay on time even though you have had discussions, you have agreed a way of working out the payments and then all of a sudden they stop taking your calls or not responding to emails?

Well, in the past this was the situation we were in and we naively thought that the customer in question would clear his debt and all would be well again.  How silly were we?  He ended up leaving us, still owing us a considerable amount of money, was verbally threatening on email and telephone and was so horrid that we ended up giving him the information he required to set up his website with someone else just to get rid of him.  That was a year ago and to this day we have still not received the money even after spending more money asking a debt collection company to get involved.

So, you can imagine how awkward we now feel when we find ourselves in a similar situation with two more customers.  Long standing customers, one of them is relatively local, and we are in the position where if we take the websites down we are effectively cutting off one of the major streams of income to their businesses.  Whilst this pains us and makes us feel uncomfortable, from a business point of view we are in the position of if we take their website offline then we are almost guaranteeing that the relationship is now beyond repair and we are probably going to lose their business.

Well, we had to toughen up, one website went offline yesterday – and amazingly enough the customer has got in touch – the other website is due to go offline tomorrow – we will see what happens then.  In the grand scheme of things, it is not cost effective having to spend time chasing payments so what do you do as a small business owner who doesn’t like to upset people?

I don’t know the answer!  As always, keen to find out how you deal with this situation because I am sure we are not the only ones.

However, the same can not be said about many people we meet.  Don’t get me wrong, many have embraced Twitter along with Facebook and actively get involved, but you know, after the last week’s worth of tweets from ‘some’ people we have been following, it really is no wonder people don’t get Twitter.

Scenario….. as most of you are aware we live in beautiful Scotland and for the past week or so have been living in a golfers paradise thanks to the golf up at Castle Stuart, which, let me be clear whilst it’s not a million miles away it most definitely is not on our immediate door step and as a neighbour showed us yesterday in order to be there for the golf he had to leave here at 6.30am on a Sunday morning!  However, if you had been watching our Twitter stream you would be excused from thinking we live and work next door to Castle Stuart and actually its not the golf that people have been here for it has been for the wonderful shopping, accommodation, lunches and dinners that they can have #castlestuart #golfopen #golfspecial !

Before I go off into rant mode, I personally don’t have an issue with hanging onto the marketing coat tales of a big event.  What I do have an issue with is blatant advertising made to look like it is a public service, somehow it just seems wrong to me.  In our eyes ramming sales messages down our twitter stream throat is a sure way to make us unfollow.  It also makes us more aware of why people don’t get Twitter.

So we’re asking please…. remember the old example : would you stand in a room full of people you don’t know and without any prompting start shouting out a sales message?  The answer hopefully is no!

In our case there are only 2 of us ‘in the office’  although as you know we work with many other companies, but in the grand scheme of things we can discuss an idea and pretty much put it into practice the next day – complete flexibility!

As Barry mentioned in his comment, us Brits are known for being a bit ‘tight’ sometimes especially when it comes to paying for something that we can’t touch i.e. SEO or Internet marketing.  So we decided to change the way we work.  The upshot of this is we are keeping our customers longer, they are actually spending more money with us, they are definitely recommending our services more and they are enjoying the freedom of complete flexibility.   So what do we now offer:

• different types of packages for smaller businesses
• no annual contract unless specifically asked for
• flexibility to ‘dip in and out of our services’ whenever the customer wishes
• a transparent pricing policy – ongoing work is ‘by the hour’ rather than a contract figure per month

Obviously there are limitations to our flexibility and quite often there has to be a compromise e.g. if we recommend a project requires 16 hours per month for 3 months to achieve the customer’s requirements and they only want to spend 8 hours for 2 months the reality is this will have a direct impact on our ability to produce the desired results – as long as the customer is aware of these consequences then there is no problem.  The absolute key to our business is absolute transparancey and ultimately an amount of flexibility that will ensure the customer is happy with the level of service for the price they are paying.

And, when Barry asked if we ‘stick to our guns’ regarding not lowering our price just to get a sale – then answer is absolutely yes.  There is no point in making a sale if it is going to harm the profitability of your business.  Who wants to work for free unless you are a dedicated volunteer?

Don’t worry, I am not going to go off on a rant again, its just that I am getting so disheartened with people thinking that we should be cheaper for the work we carry out… actually that’s unfair, the majority of people are aware that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, or in our case if you pay proper fees then you get professional service.

In our ever evolving company, we often discuss well into the night the direction we want to take our business and many moons ago we made the decision not to ‘sell our soul to the devil’ or to be more precise – sell ourselves short.  No more would we try and fit in with a customer who says things like ‘what could you do for £20 a month’… the answer now is ‘nothing’!

So why the blog post?  Well as ever I just wanted to share with you the thought process behind our small business, and to hopefully give down to earth honest advice to other start up and small businesses.  If you know you are worth the money and you work hard for that money (cue Donna Summer!) then don’t undervalue yourself or your product.  By all means negotiate and even barter if it is appropriate, but in our experience the customers that paid the smallest amount usually demanded the highest quantity of our time and therefore we ultimately lost money.

As ever, your thoughts, suggestions or just comments are always welcome.

No matter how professional you are, there will be times in your life that you are also faced with external pressures, family issues, health issues, they all combine and whilst most of us can appear as calm business people 99.9% of the time this can sometimes prove just a wee bit much of a struggle.

So, my tips to help beat the stress of the work/life balance, following on from a great article I read on Jobs2U are as follows, and yes many of them will seem like common sense, but sometimes you need to be reminded!

• Make a list – what needs doing, what can you do, what can be left for a day or two, what is priority – sometimes just writing or typing things down can make you realise that there isnt quite as much to do as you thought there was.
• Take breather breaks – make an excuse to go for a walk or the shops, even half an hour away from you desk can put things into perspective.
• Delegate where possible – you are not invincible, accept the help of others if it is available.
• Don’t skip meals, don’t survive soley on strong coffee and don’t sit up working through the night when actually you should be in bed!
• And last but most definitely not least – yes your business is important, but so are your family and friends, they need you too sometimes, so re-schedule, give realistic time estimates to customers and schedule in some days off – we all need them!

One thing that has confirmed that we are not alone in our self-employment crusade, was the amount of people we have spoken to over the last couple of months who never take the statutory 20 days holiday a year.  The old adage that ‘if you don’t work you don’t get paid’ is a real worry to many self employed people, however, with clever planning and some extra hours prior to your holiday, it is possible to take a proper holiday.  Saying all this, I have to confess that this year will be the first year we have ever taken 2 weeks off in the whole of the 8 years we have been self employed, so it may be a case of ‘do what I say, not do as I do’!

Interested to hear other techniques that you use to keep the balance right and work effectively.  I think we have finally got to the point where we know our limitations and plan properly, something we definitely did not do in the early years.

Having read an article in This is London – and can I just say thanks to Robin Dalton for pointing me in the direction of this article – in my view there are a lot of people who would just love for Facebook to fail.  However, I dont think FB is going anywhere.  I agree it is going to have to change to keep up with some of the feedback they have been receiving recently, however, in the grand scheme of the FB world is 100,000 user profiles really going to make much difference?  As one person commented on the article, the actual number of users will never be a true figure will it?  Think of all the forgotten profiles, the duplicate profiles, the people ‘still’ using profiles instead of business pages.

Marc Hindley from Canary Dwarf (@canary_dwarf) tweeted recently that he can’t believe that Twitter doesn’t use a 6 month innactive user profile will be deleted policy – I think this is quite right, and in fact more businesses would have more realistic user profile figures if this policy was rolled out across the majority of social platforms.

Ultimately, we will all vote with our feet, or in the case of social media we will vote with our profile deletions… but to all of those people who scream and shout that FB is using their information, is putting in place face recognition software, is changing the way their profiles look, you must remember that you signed up to them and you probably didnt read all the small print – do any of us?

Many of my clients query why the search results that they see do not match the results that I am sending them data on or discussing with them on the phone.  It has been mooted for a long time now that the likes of the search giant Google and social media behemoth Facebook display different search results for different people based on the history, topic, frequency, location (and much more) of their search queries – basically these sites that have become part of our everyday online lives are now filtering the results that we see based on information that we are feeding them on a daily basis.

Catching up on some reading, I came across an article that explains this scenario, the current and future state of the Internet with regards to a’personalised Internet’ much better than I ever can … thought provoking stuff.

Should we be scared of the made-to-measure internet? http://bit.ly/lMsMoh

(c) 2011 Guardian Newspapers Limited.

What started as a simple online exploration into possible accommodation review sites unearthed a scandal, or at any rate, a controversy. Regardless of whether or not you are a proprietor or a customer, there appears to be a problem with TripAdvisor. A cursory stroll through Google’s search engine throws up a number of articles. In truth, that may not be all that surprising. Were you to Google almost any subject, I am sure a number of articles would crop up.

Paul Garrity says it well in “TripAdvisor Backlash and Online Reputation Management” :

“… Unsatisfied and angry customers don’t just leave an establishment vowing ‘never to stay there again’; they now go online and write a review telling the world about their experiences.”

However, the Scottish “Dragon”, entrepreneur, philanthropist and best selling author raised concerns recently in Duncan Bannatyne Speaks Out Over TripAdvisor Negative Review Threats saying “People are coming to our hotels and threatening to write bad reviews in order to get money off their bills.” Nor is he the only one speaking up.

As many as 700 owners of guesthouses, B&Bs and hotels are joining forces over the increasingly unfair reports. KwikChex, a company specialising in protecting online reputations, has been collecting examples of comments that it believes overstep the mark. The threatened defamation action comes amid claims by KwikChex that elements within the TripAdvisor business model are “seriously flawed”.

In response to Bannatyne, the TripAdvisor Support Team said in an email to his company: “If an attempt is made to subvert our system, TripAdvisor may take one or more of the following actions on your property listing: drop it by several pages in the TripAdvisor popularity index, post a large red penalty notice explaining that the reviews are suspicious, exclude it from TripAdvisor’s Travellers Choice awards, Top 10 lists, press releases, etc.”

Bannatyne said: “How can it be right that TripAdvisor will penalise us by saying that we are subverting their system by standing up for the truth? By telling me not to threaten legal action to someone who has told lies, TripAdvisor are behaving in a threatening manner.”

You can view an ‘about us’ on Trip Advisor’s website here to get the full picture on what they see themselves as, however, some may question the “real travellers” claim, as an underlying problem for TripAdvisor is that they are not a transactional business – or put more simply, you do your research on the website, but book elsewhere. This means it has no actual proof that reviewers have actually stayed in the hotels they are commenting on, unlike websites of leading booking agents Expedia, Hotels.com and LateRooms carry hundreds of thousands of warts-and-all hotel reviews. To be able to have a review posted up on one of these websites, you must have made a booking through the agent and stayed at the hotel in question.

“We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language,” as remarked by Oscar Wilde.  Spend any length of time on TripAdvisor and you will soon discover that he could have added taste in hotels, as well. What Europeans see as rustic charm, Americans see as dingy neglect; where we see a generous plate of food, they see unreasonable frugality. Of course, it works the other way as well; a lot of Europeans moan about the lack of a free breakfast in North American hotels.

Despite its success, few seem to feel affection for TripAdvisor; it’s too big, too open and just too American for many people. Anyone is free to register and say anything about practically any hotel in the world without fear of comeback. In fact, one B&B owner, John Holder, left a TripAdvisor master-class held at the Park Plaza Hotel at Westminster Bridge comparing the US-based organisation – unfavourably – to the Catholic Church. “It extends itself globally looking for money to send to Rome – or rather America,” he said. “It treats owners as if it is far above them, in another world. I can’t help feeling its headquarters is just one massive computer.”

TripAdvisor claims it goes to great lengths to ensure its reviews are authentic. Sophisticated computer software and “quality assurance” staff are employed to detect fraudulent reviews; properties with suspicious-looking reviews are flagged up with red penalty notices. It can, of course, work both ways. Many hotels have been approached by PR companies offering to fabricate glowing reviews for them while many others make use of family and friends to create positive reviews. However, this openness also makes it possible for vindictive guests or unscrupulous competitors to abuse their position even, in some cases, resorting to extortion or blackmail. (“If you give me a discount, I’ll write a good review. If you don’t I’ll write a terrible one.”)

All of the above is just the tip of the iceberg, and a very big iceberg for the hospitality sector it is. These grave concerns cannot by any means all be laid at the door of TripAdvisor, this is more importantly an issue regarding online reputation management.  Many hoteliers are only now beginning to realise the scale and impact of “Internet Trolls”  you’ve all met them, you will find them on virtually every blog, every news article you read and very heavily represented on TripAdvisor.  They are posters of unnecessarily nasty, malicious and manipulative comments.  Their intent is to lure unsuspecting readers into an equally nasty response and they are then able to perpetuate their presence and ruin your surfing experience.   They are typically highly vocal and very critical of, well, everything.  They actually only make up 1% of online reviewers, it just feels like more.  Regardless of their actual number “Trolls” command a disproportionate voice on the Internet and especially TripAdvisor.

How does a business respond?  Should a business respond?  Some things a business should avoid are generic or stock responses to their ‘good’ and ‘bad’ reviews submitted by internet users.  Accommodation providers and Hoteliers may not like that their customer relations management has gone online but the fact is that it has.  Although the internet can bring a feeling of anonymity -  it is false.  The internet is like a web, connecting in several directions. Assume that everything you do on here, every button you click, every site you visit – is public. You are not anonymous. If you had a customer standing in front of you or you were talking to them on the telephone, what would you say to them? Would you have an argument with them on the telephone or any other mode of mass communication? It’s a good idea, I believe, for a business to have a PR strategy in place for handling all internet communication.

What can those of us innocently trying to book a holiday do? Well, I have a few suggestions for those of you using internet review sites:

• Discernment is vital. Be very suspicious of both the ‘excellent’ and the ‘terrible’ reviews. The ‘truth’ always lies somewhere in the middle.
• Don’t rely on the reviews or ratings from the few. TripAdvisor is at its most dependable when there are dozens of interviews to help you choose. Especially when the reviewers continue to make similar claims.
• Look for reviews with detail. They are less likely to be a work of fiction.
• Does your review come with a photo attached? They tend to be more authentic.
• Concentrate on reviews written by people like you, (will you be travelling alone, or as a family…).

And finally, slightly off topic, is a quote from Arthur Frommer, founder of Frommer’s travel guide which I found on a Lonely Planet Travel Blog , “Find write-ups by professionals whose judgements you trust and rely on that… I would never rely on the judgement of amateurs.”

What are my plans now, so I hear you ask? Well, for me, it’s back to my Lonely Planet guides and local tourist websites….

Bon Voyage!